Amazon has just released a new free iPad app, called Amazon Windowshop that the company says is a complete “rewrite” of Amazon.com specifically for the iPad. Optimized for touch screen tablets, Amazon Windowshop makes it easy to swipe through the store to browse products on the iPad.

Similar to Amazon’s website, the app features product lists including “Featured”, “Bestsellers”, “Recommendations”, “New Releases”, “Most Wished For”, “Most Gifted”, and “Movers & Shakers”.

Amazon presents products via a grid-like interface, but will include pop-outs of specific products with high-resolution images, user reviews, descriptions and videos related to that product (which includes 30 second samples for the music items).

For Amazon Prime members, the app will indicate which products qualify for Amazon Prime and include Amazon 1-Click checkout. You can also share products from the app via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter, save an item for later by adding it to your Wish List, and more.

Essentially the app is a suped up version of Amazon.com that is designed specifically for the iPad. It almost feels like a catalog, because of the layout and images. As the holiday season draws near, Amazon is undoubtedly ramping up its online shopping offerings, and capitalizing on the continued growth in the the consumer use of the iPad.

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Amazon Launches Brand New iPad Shopping App Called Windowshop

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, we had a panel entitled “Does The iPad Change Everything For News, Or Is It Still All About The Web?” The New York Times’ David Carr moderated the panel which included angel investor Ron Conway, Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, and Bloomberg chief content officer Norm Pearlstine. The common theme? The only thing that can stop the iPad is Apple.

While that may sound confusing (since, of course, Apple makes the iPad), everyone seemed to agree that Apple’s restrictions could end up hurting the device in the long run. Apple is in control right now because they’re the first to market with a killer product, but others will emulate them, reasons Pearlstine. He believes a lot of the content on these type of tablets will eventually be web-based rather than app-based (similar to an argument Google co-founder Sergey Brin made last week).

Carr extended on that question, asking if maybe the iPad itself would just be a device where you consume content on the web rather than through apps?Hippeau says that’s up to Apple. Clearly they want to push people towards apps, behind their wall, he believes. The problem with this is that Apple doesn’t give back nearly as much data as having your own website would, Hippeau says. He thinks Apple will have to learn that media organizations live  off of this data. “They’ll have to open it up more,” he says.

Pearlstine agrees, saying that the key for traditional publishers is their lists of subscribers. More importantly, they have their payment information. With iPad apps, Apple has that information, and that will be a problem for a lot of media companies. “There will be other providers that won’t do it the Apple way,” he says. That, again, is implying that while Apple may have jump-started the industry, if they don’t open up a bit more, a competitor will beat them.

Of course, that hasn’t happened with the iPhone yet. But Android is charging fast.

Conway believes that Apple has a good lead for now though thanks to its “fantastic user interface.” He sees publishers flocking to it just like the music business did to the iPod/iTunes combo. “It’s a better model than free,” he says.

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News Panel: The Only Thing That Can Stop The iPad Is Apple

The history of P2P file sharing service Kazaa (which actually started life as “KaZaA”) is known to most of us born in the eighties or before, and consists mainly of copyright related lawsuits and adware-ridden software.

The gist of the story can be found on its Wikipedia profile, but what many seem to forget in present times is that the service is still around, serving users an unlimited amount of (licensed) songs for a $20 monthly subscription fee.

Recently, a Symantec security program apparently identified the Kazaa desktop client as high-risk, flagging the software as adware. This prompted Brilliant Digital Entertainment, the company that operates Kazaa, to issue a special notice / consumer alert to its customers.

And it isn’t pulling any punches.

While boasting about the fact that Kazaa is now a legitimate business offering over one million fully licensed tracks to its customers, Kazaa claims Symantec for the second time in recent weeks incorrectly identified it as being high risk. As a result, the company says, a subset of users were unable to use Kazaa because Symantec’s security software flagged it as adware. Some of its users were apparently “sufficiently spooked by Symantec’s unilateral action” after those warnings that they followed its advice to remove Kazaa.

In an angered statement, the company adds:

Symantec had justified turning off the music for some of Kazaa customers by flagging files in the Kazaa music plug-in application as high risk due to the files being used for serving advertisements. As a result Kazaa customers or subscribers running Norton AV are having these files stripped from the application which prevents them from using the service.

It continues:

Symantec’s error, hot on the heels of a similar mistake against Spotify, highlights the potential for anti-virus companies to do more harm than good in the effort to displace pirate operations from the on-line marketplace.

After the Spotify incident (Symantec classified the music streaming service as a Trojan about a week ago), the security software company apologized on Twitter. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this notice from Kazaa.

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Kazaa Takes A Swing At Symantec After Adware Accusations

Chances are you’ve never heard of Netbiscuits – I sure hadn’t. But the company operates one of the world’s largest B2B web software platforms enabling thousands of publishers to create, manage and generate revenue from mobile websites.

Netbiscuits serves the mobile Internet programs for brands like Yahoo, MTV, and eBay, and well known digital agencies such as Razorfish, Isobar, and ad networks like Google-owned AdMob. To give you an idea of its size: globally, Netbiscuits claims to deliver more than 1.5 billion mobile page impressions on a monthly basis.

This morning, the decade-old company announced that it has partnered with Universal Music Group to help the music company expand its line-up of direct-to-consumer mobile content and services, after a successful test run centered around a mobile website for Bon Jovi in November 2009.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Netbiscuits will essentially be aiding UMG in setting up and operating artist-branded mobile websites, which will give fans the ability to interact with other fans and to make purchases directly from their handsets. Based on the mobile websites, Netbiscuits also enables UMG to set up hybrid apps for several major platforms, including the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile devices.

UMG also plans to utilize the text messaging service that comes integrated within the Netbiscuits platform, providing music fans with SMS alerts whenever their favorite artists are in town.

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Netbiscuits Signs Tasty Deal With UMG For Artist-branded Mobile…

Digital music company eMusic is rumored to be up for sale, according to various reports, but that hasn’t stopped it from signing licensing deals with big music. This morning, eMusic announced that it come to an agreement with Warner Music Group and that it will soon begin selling tracks from WMG’s roster of artists to its U.S. users.

eMusic last year inked a similar deal with Sony Music Entertainment.

The agreement includes titles from WMG’s Atlantic Records, Rhino Records and Warner Bros. Records as well as from independent labels distributed through WMG’s Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) stable that are not currently sold on eMusic. The deal will make 10,000 catalog albums from artists like REM, Depeche Mode and Aretha Franklin available for downloading, but does not include newer hit records.

eMusic says it currently offers more than 7.5 million tracks, and that it has sold more than 350 million music downloads under its current ownership. The company sells monthly membership plans beginning at 24 credits for $11.99. One of its rival, FreeAllMusic, yesterday announced that it had signed an agreement with Universal Music for ad-supported downloads.

eMusic CEO Danny Stein reiterated earlier rumors about its plans to complement the company’s subscription-based music download service with streaming, telling Reuters that the company is currently in talks with label partners for new licensing deals that would allow registered users to stream songs, similar to services like CBS-owned Last.fm and LaLa (which Warner Music Group invested in and was recently acquired by Apple).

Streaming would be added in 2010, provided rights holders come to terms with the realities of new business models, Stein said. We’ve contacted the company for more information about its streaming plans, such as timing and pricing.

Interestingly, Stein didn’t dismiss rumors about a potential sale of eMusic, but told Reuters that a buyer would have to pay its owner, Dimensional Associates, for a successful 2010 and 2011 upfront in order for them to consider it.

Which sounds to me like something that you would say if you were definitely up for sale.

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eMusic Reels In Another Major Label With Warner Music Deal

It was only a few weeks ago that I first made mention of UFC's efforts against piracy. The gist of the argument was, just let it happen and concentrate on maintaining the company's momentum. The UFC doesn't want to end up like the music industry, having sued its fans into indifference, if not antagonism, toward its product.

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UFC Vows To Go After Pirates No Matter The Cost

File syncing and storage startup Zumodrive has raised $1.5 million in funding led by Sherpalo Ventures with Tandem Entrepreneurs and VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron participating. We initially reviewed Zumodrive here.

While there are a plethora of syncing and storage services available to users, Zumodrive, which spawned from Y Combinator startup Zecter, has a different take on file syncing. Similar to other services, Zumodrive creates a drive on your device that is synced to the cloud. But service has a different twist-the service tricks the file system into thinking those cloud-stored files are local, and streams them from the cloud when you open or access them.

ZumoDrive, which currently has 300,000 users, recently launched a new version which lets users to access their music playlists, photo albums and document folders on any device. ZumoDrive mimics a standard hard drive but saves content in the cloud and then streams it to each device instead of saving local copies, making it the killer app for the netbook and other devices with limited storage.

Zumo now plays nice with the iPhone, with an new app that lets users sync their content to their phone without having todeal with local storage capacity issues. And ZumoDrive released a new version of its system that wirelessly syncs playlists between devices, auto-detects content, and lets users link file folders on their devices to ZumoDrive only once so that changes in that folder will always be linked to ZumoDrive. The service has also been upgraded to integrate well with media applications, like iTunes, so users can play entire music libraries saved in ZumoDrive on multiple devices without manually syncing content. ZumoDrive will use the new funding for product development.

Zecter previously launched a product called Versionate, an office-wiki product, that we first covered in July 2007. We wrote about them again a year ago. ZumoDrive faces competition from Dropbox, SugarSync, and Box.net.

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ZumoDrive Lands $1.5 Million For Cloud Storage And Syncing Application

Earlier today we covered rumors that Apple was in talks to acquire streaming music service Lala. Now New York Times tech reporter Brad Stone has tweeted that it’s a done deal. He writes, “Apple has acquired digital music startup Lala. Now updating our story”. You can find the NYT story here.

This could be bad news for Lala users. It’s unlikely that the innovative deals negotiated by Lala will survive through the acquisition. For over a year, Lala users have been purchasing the rights to stream their music an unlimited number of times for ten cents per song. If the deals with the music labels go up in smoke, Lala may lose the right to stream those songs. In other words, all the money users have been spending on web songs may go down the drain. If the deals are nullified, hopefully Apple will renegotiate them to at least cover existing purchases until it releases its own streaming music service. We’ve reached out to Lala but have yet to hear back.

Likewise, this may well affect the Lala music gifts that have been recently offered by Facebook, and it could also harm the Music OneBox service Google recently launched (though Google can still rely on MySpace/iLike for its song streams).

Stone writes that Apple is interested in Lala because of its engineering talent and technology, and that it was Lala that initiated the discussions. From the Times:

One person with knowledge of the deal, but who was not authorized to discuss it, said that the negotiations originated when Lala executives concluded that their prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim and initiated discussions with Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president in charge of iTunes.

This person said Apple would primarily be buying Lala’s engineers, including its energetic co-founder Bill Nguyen, and their experience with cloud-based music services.

The deal makes sense. It seems inevitable that Apple will eventually launch its own cloud-based streaming music service. And that’s exactly what Lala is — an iTunes in the cloud, with some interesting pricing mechanics.

A few other interesting things to note. This acquisition comes a little more than a month after Lala was integrated into Google’s OneBox and Facebook’s gift store. Lala may well have been viewing these launches as last-chance efforts to find a path to profitability. Given these reports that Lala’s “prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim”, it looks like those launches may not have gone as well as Lala hoped.

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Apple Has Acquired Lala

It’s the announcement Steve Jobs has been waiting to make for years: that one of his favorite bands, and perhaps the greatest of all time, will finally be available on the music store that he created. Now he may have just had his thunder stolen. Two hours ago, Sky News reported that the Fab Four are finally coming to iTunes, attributing the news to John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, who is in charge of managing the music legend’s estate. The story kicked off with the headline:

“The whole of the Beatles back catalogue will be made available to buy on iTunes, Yoko Ono has told Sky News.”

But almost immediately after publishing the story Sky News killed it, leaving nothing but a blank page in its wake. Google News had a cache of it for a brief time, but that too has apparently disappeared in record time. 9to5mac spotted the article and reached Sky News for more information, only to be told that the news organization was unable to comment.

At this point there are two possibilities: Sky either made a major blunder and posted something that was untrue, or Apple has unleashed its hounds on the news network. My guess is the latter. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that The Beatles on iTunes will be announced tomorrow (the Sky report, or what’s left of it, doesn’t make a release date clear). In fact, a report in the Financial Times today quotes EMI global catalog president Ernesto Schmitt as explicitly ruling out a 9/9/09 release, stating, “Conversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally. But it’s not tomorrow.”

Another interesting point from the FT article: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison want to sell the Beatles catalog on iTunes, but EMI has objected because of concerns over piracy, of all things (according to McCartney, EMI is worried about being held liable if any tracks leak to the web). Of course, the only way to obtain digital versions of The Beatles catalog online at this point is through piracy.

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Did Yoko Ono And Sky News Just Ruin Apple’s Beatles Surprise?

This happens every year. Rumors begin to swirl that Apple is holding a music-related event, and after the talk dies down of what new iPods are in store, the focus shifts to iTunes. And from there, it shifts to The Beatles. You know, the most popular band of all time that happens to have no songs from its catalog available for legal purchase anywhere online. Yeah, those Beatles.

So anyway, every year there are rumors of The Beatles coming to iTunes. The rumors seem to start from just about everywhere: From Steve Jobs’ love of The Beatles, to EMI removing DRM on music, to the settlement of lawsuits with Apple Corp, to the appearance of Beatles’ album covers on Apple event promotions. There have even been quotes from Paul McCartney saying he thought such a deal would happen soon. The only problem is that it never ends up happening. But this year could actually be different. Well, maybe.

First of all, The Beatles are definitely releasing their music in video game form for a new Rock Band game. That’s a first for them, branching out of traditional music distribution. This game is launching on 9/9/09, which happens to be the same day as the rumored next Apple event. That, in and of itself, doesn’t really mean much, but there are reports today that on the same day, The Beatles are releasing their entire catalog, digitally re-mastered for the first time, on CD, as Cult of Mac points out.

Wait, CD? People still buy those? Yes, they do, though they’re increasingly going digital and choosing iTunes as their store. So it stands to reason that EMI and Apple Corps (The Beatles’ label, not to be confused with the other Apple we’re talking about here) have looked at the numbers and seen the trends, and realize that if they really want the catalog to explode in sales, they’re going to have to release it online, and preferably through iTunes.

But there’s more. In the press release for The Beatles re-mastered release there’s this nugget:

Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album.

What does that sound like? It sounds like the perfect type of album for Apple to try out its new “Cocktail” music format, also set to be unveiled at the September event. While not all the details are known about Cocktail, it is believe that it’s a format that places emphasis on album purchases by giving downloaders all types of goodies like, yes, artwork, booklets, liner notes, photos and films.

The press release says nothing of online versions of the albums, but it’s entirely possible that those are being kept as a surprise, and possibly even for Apple’s event. Or maybe not. But at the very least, you know that while the engineers were remastering the recordings, they were thinking about how the catalog would be dispersed over the web eventually too. It’s not a matter of “if”, but a question of “when”. And 9/9/09 sounds like the perfect date for a full-on assault of Beatles music on the masses.

This is of course all just speculation, that history suggests will be wrong. But if we find out that the Apple event is at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco on 9/9/09, and that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr both happen to be in town…I’m just saying. And how would that be for a Steve Jobs return to the limelight after months away on medical leave? Boom!

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Let It Be…True. Beatles And iTunes Come Together Again In Rumors